Automated Video Editing Site Makes Movie Magic Out of Raw Footage

The Israel-based startup is launching to the public Tuesday with an automated video editing platform. Magisto’s promise: Give us your unedited footage, and we’ll give you a short movie that you can proudly show off to friends and family.

In fact, that’s nearly all there is to the site. You can upload up to 16 video files, add a title and soundtrack — select from available tracks or add your own — and then sit back and wait for an email to notify you that your mini movie is ready to be shared.

Magisto is not for the artistically-inclined, obsess-over-every-detail video editor. It’s for average Joes and Janes who don’t have the time or interest to bother with learning or using complicated editing software.

either post long boring videos nobody wants to watch, or they save them on their hard drive — unwatched, unedited, unshared. We made Magisto to give people a way to take their videos and turn them into movies that are fun to watch and easy to share.”

The startup is keeping mum on its secret sauce, but does say that its proprietary technology is designed to automatically find the best footage in your videos. The technology is said to recognize faces, understand the difference between people, objects, pets and landscapes, and even capture the intent of the filmmaker.

Magisto’s magic formula, from what we’ve seen, works impressively well — so well, we’d like to see the startup release mobile applications for quicker uploads, and remove its branding at the end of finished movies.

Coinciding with Tuesday’s launch, Magisto is announcing that it has raised $5.5 million in a Series B round of financing.